The Great Pretender

Dr. Donald C. Arthur parlayed a number of bogus academic degrees into an extremely successful career in the U.S. Navy, rising all the way to surgeon general of the Navy. He even had the nerve to wear a combat action ribbon as part of his official uniform at his retirement in 2007 despite never having been involved in combat.

In 2005, the Stolen Valor team began investigating Dr. Donald C. Arthur, then the surgeon general of the U.S. Navy. That’s because Dr. Arthur was seen wearing a combat action ribbon as part of his official uniform at his retirement in 2007 even though there was no record he’d seen combat.

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With the purpose of writing about true crime in an authoritative, fact-based manner, veteran journalists J. J. Maloney and J. Patrick O’Connor launched Crime Magazine in November of 1998.

Their goal was to cover all aspects of true crime: from organized crime to serial killers, from capital punishment to prisons, from historical crimes to celebrity crime, from assassinations to government corruption, from justice issues to innocent cases, from crime films to books about crime. Read More